Your Next Move - Learn to Trust Your Gut

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

Today’s episode comes from the Your Next Move vault and is a conversation between host Tom Foster, editor at large at Inc and Bea Dixon, co-founder and CEO of the Honey Pot Company, the world’s first plant-based feminine care line, which she sold earlier this year for $380 million.In their conversation, they cover Bea’s journey, which began with inspiration delivered to her in a dream, following your instincts, and raising millions as a black female founder.

With the Venture X Business card from Capital One, you earn unlimited double miles on every purchase. And with no preset spending limit, your purchasing power adapts to meet your business needs. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash Venture X Business. Terms and conditions apply. I'm Sarah Lynch and you are listening to Your Next Move Audio Edition, produced by Inc. and Capital One Business. Today's episode comes from the Your Next Move vault and is a conversation between host Tom Foster, editor at large at Inc.

and Bea Dixon, co-founder and CEO of the Honeypot Company, the world's first plant-based feminine care line, which she sold earlier this year for $380 million. In their conversation, they cover Bea's journey, which began with inspiration delivered to her in a dream, following your instincts, and raising millions as a Black female founder. Here is Tom's conversation with Bea Dixon. Enjoy! Beatrice, welcome.

Thanks for being here. Thank you. So nice to be here with you, Tom. Thank you to Inc and to Capital One and to everybody that sent those questions in. I'm grateful. I can't wait to get to them. I want to start with, I'm sure we have some people who are here with us today who don't really know your full backstory.

Let's just start there and can you tell us a little bit about how you got your start and what led to you realizing there was a need for this company? Well, back in early 2011, well really late 2011, early 2012, I was dealing with a year-long bacterial vaginosis infection. It would go away and come back. It was reoccurring. Um, I would go to the doctor. I would take medicine. I would take antibiotics. I would get on all kinds of forums and things of that nature to try to just figure out what I can do and anything I could find I was trying. So I was really putting myself in harm's way I was trying so I was really putting myself in harm's way in a lot of ways

Because these things aren't necessarily scientifically proven right, but I was going through a lot and One morning right before I woke up I had a very vivid dream with my grandmother and in the and my grandmother has been dead since my mother was eight So I've never even really met my grandmother But in the dream we were sitting down at a table. She handed me a piece of paper. We were talking. And she told me that she had been watching me go through this

for however long I've been going through it and that she had something that was going to get rid of it. She handed me a piece of paper. On the paper was just a list of ingredients. And she told me that I needed to remember everything that was on the paper because I needed to write it down when I woke up and I needed to make it because it was going to get rid of it. And so that's literally what I did. You know, she just kept, anytime I was trying to talk to her, she just kept saying, no, don't look at me, look at the paper, remember what's on the paper.

no, don't look at me, look at the paper. Remember what's on the paper. So that's what I did. When I woke up, I wrote it down. I made it within a couple of days because I worked at Whole Foods, a lot of all the ingredients were natural. Four to five days after that, everything that I was dealing with was gone. It was like a miracle.

That is a wild story. What were you doing at Whole Foods at the time? I was like a floor buyer in Whole Body. I was a merchandiser, like I've set up like in caps and things like that, but I worked in the Whole Body department. I did that for almost three years. So you really understood

the market that you were going into, sounds like. Yeah. I understood it on other levels as well because I began my career in pharmacy. That's how I learned how to make things, and then I went to work for Whole Foods, and then I left Whole Foods and went to be a broker. Then I left being a broker and went to work for a kale chip company called Rhythm Superfoods.

Then from there, I couldn't do both anymore. I couldn't work in Run Honeypot because it was just starting to get out of control. Well, I want to talk about that moment. That's a moment that we get questions about that moment a lot. Sure enough, we got a question this time about that moment when you know that it's time to say, oh wow, I'm going to do this full time. This is real.

D Derr, who is one of our audience members today, says, at what turning point in your professional journey did you firmly decide you were going to be an entrepreneur? So again, how did that transition, can you take us to that moment? I mean, I had made the decision that I was going to be an entrepreneur that day when I made the product and it worked. I made the decision right then that I was going to be an entrepreneur that day when I made the product and it worked, I made the decision right then that I was going to make this into a business.

So that was like the solid date. And then from there, everything was building towards when it could just grow and be this full-time thing. But I've never really believed in just starting a business, especially in skincare, I feel like you need to really understand that thing and it needs to work and the thing that you're making needs to understand people. It needs to work on their skin. We tested it for a couple of years, not through clinical trials at that time, but we tested it for a while and then we realized that a lot of the people that were trying it were getting a really great result. And then that's when we launched it. But as far as when I decided that Honey Pot needed to be my

full-time job and business and all the things, I was an area sales manager at Rhythm Superfoods. I was traveling three to four weeks out of the month. I managed three territories. And at the time we were raising money. We had already gotten into Target. We were like maybe like six months into Target. And I was trying to raise money, work, bring over a human from a relationship I was in from another country and was still running Honey Pot and trying to figure out how much to order and forecasting. I mean, I was probably working 20 hours a day.

Like I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating right, I wasn't happy, it was just, it was too much and I just, it was bad. And I just decided like I can't do this anymore. So. I love though that at that moment, you took the leap and said, you know, of all of these things, the thing I'm going to do is the entrepreneurial one.

And at that moment you go with it. I want to unpack a couple of things there. You mentioned that at that point you were already several months into your target relationship. I'm based here in Austin, Texas where Whole Foods is based. If I had to guess, I would imagine that,

and I know there are a lot of consumer packaged goods companies that come up in Austin where Whole Foods becomes a launch pad for them. I'm curious how instrumental was that for you? Or was Target actually first? Or how did you break into retail in those, it instrumental was that for you? Or was Target actually first? Or how did you break into retail in those, it sounds like very early days,

you broke into big retail? No. So we got into Target in 2017. The really early days, actually, 7-9 to co-op in Atlanta was my very first retailer. My second retailer was Whole Foods, but it was regional. And we were only in one store and we were practically giving it away because we didn't know how to price things.

And they had a set price because they hadn't really had that type of product on our feminine wash on the shelf before. But Whole Foods was our first one and we just we just took everything as it came because I traveled and got the company that I was working for my job was to put it into stores. So what I would do is I would travel, I would go to all these stores, I would present all the products that I was supposed to present. I would then walk out the store, walk back in, and then I would present honey pot.

That's really how I got the product on the shelf and a lot of the little baby retailers and even in Whole Foods, because there's multiple ways you can get into Whole Foods. It can be regional, it can be a local store, it could be all the stores. For me, it was like local at that time. Got it. I want to come back to Target later in this conversation. I know there's a lot to talk about with Target.

I want to go to another audience question right now. Christine Brooks Cropper who's watching, wants to know more about the process of pitching Target. She asks, how did you pitch your company to Target? What did you say? What did you wear? How long were you in the market before you achieved that? Because I think, I love this question

because it's so real. I mean, that is an incredibly intimidating moment. And I would love to hear, you know, how you thought about that. I guess, see, I've been really fortunate, Tom. I really feel like my ancestors really prepared me for this because by the time I was talking to Target, I had already been a sales manager for a startup.

I had already been a broker, right? When I worked at Whole Foods, Tom, you would have been my customer, right? If you came into the store to buy groceries, you would have been my customer. But once I became a broker, now Whole Foods was my customer. Sprouts was my customer, right? The natural retailers that you can think about, they became my customers. So, by the time I had already talked to Target, I had been pitching for like five years to get into retailers because that was what my job was.

But in the beginning, I'm actually teaching a class tonight with Target on Unbobbed and Refinery29 about pitching. Whenever you want to pitch a retailer, the thing that's important to remember is what made you start your product in the first place? A, right? What is your story that got you there? Even if you recreated a will, what was the thing that made you say, I need to do this because I'm not finding what I need? Right? You want to tell that story. You want to really understand what the problem is in the marketplace. Why is that problem happening? Why is that white space there?

You wanna help them understand why you're the solution. And it's really good before you go into a retailer, it's almost extremely important for you to have been sold online or on Amazon or in some sort of a small retail type of a setting because you need to be able to explain to retail that you understand your supply chain, right? You understand what it means to buy things, to sell things, to make things.

And you have to really deliver that message because when you go into a mass market retailer like Target or anybody else, right? Their expectation is that you know what you're doing. They aren't there to teach you. You don't even get paid when you go into Target or any retailer for at least a couple of months, especially when it's your first time, right? So it's really important that you understand that. So I knew that going in. So the presentation part, that wasn't the hard part for me. Actually, getting to the yes was the easy part for me. What was hard for me after that was raising money.

That's something that I had never done before. But when you're going in, you just need to be yourself. And you need to really explain and know your product right you need to know why your product and who is your product? And who are you who's your demographic and you need to dress how you dress? Don't go into these meetings super polished up and buttoned up if you've got tattoos if you wear your hair crazy Be who you are because Whether it's an investor or a buyer or whomever, they are really there to buy you.

They're buying who you are because who you are is what speaks to and grows your brand. So it's really important for you to be there. And some people think to hire a salesperson, till this day, our president of sales, me and Kelly Bottenfield, we go to every single major retail meeting together. There is to this day, and this has been since 2014. I didn't have her then, but I just want you to understand how important it is for the founder, the creator to to be there, you know. But keep it simple, keep it sweet, understand your business.

If you don't know all the data, that's cool. Know as much as you can. And most importantly, be yourself. And don't be afraid to drop a cuss word every now and again, because people need, real shit, because people need to understand that you're human. They talk to people all day who feel like they have to come in and be a certain way. Like nobody wants to buy somebody who's not real, right?

And they know that if you show up as you and you're comfortable in that, that is going to communicate to how you do everything in your business. I love that answer. I love that answer. We hear so often about the importance of authenticity. It's this word that gets, you talk to anybody about branding and what works. Authenticity is the word that comes up. But what you just said is a way of just making that very real and very simple for

anybody to understand what does authenticity mean. It means just be yourself. Just be yourself. It's a great answer. You also alluded to something else that I want to unpack, which is the fundraising process. I started out by saying at the outset of this session that, you are one of the first 40 women

to raise a million or more dollars in venture capital. Not only that, but the people who invest in companies tend to be male, tend to be white male, and they invest in things that they know. I mean, we see this over and over. What you're doing is not only do you as a founder not fit that profile in who you are, but your product fits a market need that isn't actually familiar to most investors. I imagine that presented a lot of big hurdles,

and I would love to hear how you tackled that. Yeah, it definitely presented hurdles. Like you just said, it's not just white men who invest in what they know, just humans invest in what they know, right? Like, I can tell you pictures that I went to, and it seemed like it was going to work out, and it seemed like it was, like, we had done all the profit and loss statements. We had sent every financial document that you could imagine and we had built data rooms

that were so beautiful, right? And we may have talked to these people five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten times because you're constantly pitching them, right? And then they'll be like, well, you know, I don't really know this business. So I just I know that you did all this work, but I don't think it's something that I can get into. And when you think about it, taking yourself out of it, yourself being the brand and the founder, it's especially if it's somebody who has built their own wealth. It's natural to not want to invest in what you don't know. And when you have a lot of these investment funds,

a lot of these investment funds represent high net worth individuals and that's how they built their hedge fund or their venture capital fund or their private equity fund. And so they sometimes are moving based on the money that has been brought into the fund. And so there's so many levels to understanding people going with what they know, even if it's not popular because my skin happens to be what humans in this society call black. And that comes with a kind of a predisposition.

But I think what's happening now is really beautiful. Now, being black is where they want to put their money, right? Not being black, but investing into black companies. But the hurdles we faced were, I mean, sometimes there were racist hurdles. Sometimes there was bigotry. Sometimes people, you know, sometimes there were racist hurdles, sometimes there was bigotry, sometimes people, you know, sometimes it just didn't work out because they didn't understand it. But the real shit behind that is, is I'm grateful for every one of those moments, right? Because I wouldn't want to be in fucking bed with a bigot, right? I wouldn't want to be

in bed with a racist. I wouldn't want to be in bed with a bigot, right? I wouldn't want to be in bed with a racist. I wouldn't want to be in bed with somebody that cares that I have a vagina and if I'm emotional one day and don't, I don't want to be in bed with people like that. I don't want to be in business because once they invest in your business, they are there and that does not go away. You understand what I'm saying? So I'm grateful for all of the hurdles. I'm grateful for all of the people that didn't work out

because at least you know who they are. And when somebody shows you who they are, you should pay attention, right? And don't make a big deal about it. Just move on, because you don't really have time to focus on that. Like when you got to raise money, you got to raise money.

And we were desperate. It was like we are launching in target in April. It is January. I don't have time to focus on the guy or the woman who didn't want to invest. I got to get to the next person. I got to go to my next best lead because if you don't have the money,

you can't pay your manufacturers. You can't pay the humans that work. Like the money is the only thing that matters in that moment. So there were tons of hurdles. But if I'm honest, I can't even give you any specific ones because I didn't really give a shit about them because I had to just find the money. I couldn't think about it. I had to just find the money. I couldn't think about it.

I had to just stay focused. Yes, absolutely. Let me ask you a couple of follow-ups to this question, to this subject. One comes from a reader. How did you fund the early pre-revenue stage of your business? My brother's credit cards and his money.

In the business, really. Like like before we got into Target like literally like maybe a year before we got into Target so from 2014 to 2015 we were just a feminine wash company but then what I realized is that it took a long time for us to for people to consume our product, right? And when you are a consumer packaged goods company, notice that consume is within the first word. It is imperative that people are consuming your products quick and having to come back.

So what I realized is it would take like six to eight weeks for a customer to come back, which is cute, but you're not gonna really grow a strong business that has high growth potential and year over year growth that you need if people aren't coming back to consume quicker. So what we did is we found some wholesale companies. I went to a company that made pads and said,

hey, let me just wholesale those pads from you. I went to a company that made wipes and said, hey, let me wholesale those wipes from you. We would just invest in as much as we could. Maybe it was a thousand dollar order, $2,000 order. And then Honeypot website just became like this reseller website, right, but we went from doing like 40,000 to doing like 250,000 the next year and then

That summer is when early that year or late that year knows early that year is when target emailed us and year, no it was early that year, is when Target emailed us. And so we were able to go and tell that story to Target about what we did. And so we were the first company that ever made washes, wipes, and pads, but that's how, because we had to be clever about what we were doing pre-revenue, because we weren't making enough money

with just selling one type of product. So we created a way to make more, to make money through wholesaling other people's products. And then that's kind of what got us to where we are now, being this, being the vagina company where we just sell everything that a woman needs. And make those yourself now, presumably. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything is Honey Pot branded.

Yeah, yeah. I love that you went to Target though, and were, it sounds like pretty open about how you went about doing that. They probably liked the craftiness of that. Yeah. I mean, when you do this type of work, you have to think outside the box. In the beginning, it's just hard.

The only money you make is what you make. Then you got to figure out how to put that back in, recycle it. You got to turn a nickel into 15 cents. It's challenging, but you have to really be clever when you are pre-raise, pre-en mass market retail. Yeah. Did you end up raising from investors in Atlanta or were they elsewhere? First, our family and friends round was Atlanta, yes.

But there were people that may have lived in Florida or Boston. It wasn't mostly Atlanta, but the majority of it was because that's where the business is. I want to come back to Target and let's talk about more recently, something that made a lot of news earlier this year. Just for viewers who may not be familiar with it, you were featured in an advertisement for Target in a commercial. You said at the end of this commercial,

let me just read the quote, you said, the reason why it's so important for Honey Pot to do well is so that the next black girl that comes up with a great idea, she can have a better opportunity. That means a lot to me. Yeah. That's what you said. What happened when you said that? A lot of people loved it,

and a lot of people, humans saw themselves in that. Then some people didn't necessarily agree. Yeah. To me, it's so fascinating. It's an inspiring statement and it became a big controversy. Again, for folks who weren't following this in the news when it occurred, your company, your products became the target of

a lot of negative reviews at the time and social media pressure. Can you just tell that story from your experience? I find it fascinating in how it speaks to the polarization in our culture today, the weaponization of social media. There's just so much there. To have an entrepreneur who makes an inspiring statement just be sort of dragged into all of that is

important and fascinating, I think, to understand and try to sort of work through. Yeah. I don't really think that it can be understood because you can't really control people's reactions. You can't control their upbringing. You can't control their upbringing. You can't control their conditioning. And sure, when it happened,

we started to get a decent amount of emails and social media comments around, really just around people thinking that what I said was racist and why didn't I just say all girls and that's fine. That's okay. Then we thought that we were going to put out a statement, but then we decided that that wasn't really the right thing to do because how do you really respond to a person that thinks that way? Right? There really isn't a way to respond to that because clearly

anything that I could say as a response can just be made into whatever somebody else wants it to be. So we decided as a team that we wouldn't do anything and then those humans took to Trustpilot and started creating a lot of fake, basically just putting all kinds of comments. Some people didn't even really know what it was. You know, there was really beautiful, remarkable displays of racism that were hilarious.

I thought that they were funny. So that is the thing that really pushed everything over the edge. And one of our followers posted it and said that people needed to come to it. And then things went very viral. But again, you can't control, when you've got a machine like social media,

when you've got a machine like trust, like the trust pilots of the world, right? You're gonna have to understand that the good, that that can bring good and that that can bring bad. And in my mind, I just remain neutral. I don't need it to be good or bad for me because I know that I can't control that. So, but if you ask me,

there is a machine called white supremacy. And again, I'm not going to change that machine. That machine isn't my machine. It's not mine. So I can't relate to it. I can't make comments towards it because I don't have that sickness inside of me. But I'm grateful for all those people though, because I may not be sitting here talking to you

if they didn't go to TrustPilot and create all those negative comments. If the people that came to defend us and went to the stores and bought our products, which was every human, right? It wasn't just black people. It wasn't just white people. It was like all kinds of people.

And it still remains to be all kinds of people, and I'm grateful to all of those people. It was a beautiful experience. It was the best thing that ever happened to my business, Tom. Like, literally the best thing. We're going to take a quick break and be back with more from Tom and Bee. Here's a little tip for growing your business. Get the Venture X Business Card from Capital One and earn unlimited double miles on every

purchase. Plus, the Venture X Business Card has no preset spending limit, so your purchasing power can adapt to meet your business needs. And when you travel, you'll have access to over 1,300 airport lounges. Just imagine where the Venture X business card from Capital One can take your business. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Terms and conditions apply.

Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash Venture X business. To me, what I see in this is more proof that yes, there is a lot of racism out there. And also proof that there is this machine that looks for things that can further polarize our culture and uses them as moments of divisiveness and it seems like you and your company became a part of that,

became a tool in a campaign like that. The reason I say that is, be that as it may, you can sort of accept that and say, oh, that's interesting. But when TrustPilot gets flooded with negative reviews of your product because somebody is trying to use you as sort of

a tool in sort of a disinformation campaign, you have to do something to protect your business. It's sort of one thing to say, well, gosh, it's hard for us to respond, but did you ultimately find a way to do something to sort of counteract all that negative stuff? Well, time, the world responded. That day, maybe there was a one-star review

for less than 10 hours or less than 12. That one-star review went to like 4.89 stars. Just organically? Yeah, just by itself within like eight hours. For me that communicated everything. Sometimes it's better not to physically communicate because that shit communicates, right? I don't have anything to say to somebody that wants to try to pull me down to their sickness. They can keep that shit.

I'm gonna go over here. For me, that's how, if you ask me how I would handle it again and again, I would do it the same exact way. And that doesn't make the way that I handled it the right way, but it's my way. And for me, that's what matters. Handling it with integrity, I love it.

Absolutely. Has that had a lasting impact? It sounds like it has a lasting impact on your sales, a positive impact, I mean. Yeah, I mean, everything has had a positive impact. I just live in this bubble of positive impact, and I'm so grateful for it. It's amazing. To stay on the social media subject,

to what extent has social media been an important tool for your company in customer acquisition and brand building? What has been your strategy around that? Really, social media for years was our only tool, because we really run like a bootstrap business, even though we have had funding in the past. But you know, funding is only going to last so long, right? You can't, we've never had this huge, remarkable, ridiculous round of funding that could just

hold us forever and ever. So the only place that we actually did digital marketing and still to this day actually is on Instagram. And the reason for that is because we just didn't have the money to put towards these colossal marketing budgets. We're on all of the channels, all of the social media channels, right? But I think because we've really stuck to Instagram, because we knew that it worked, thank you to that person just said that to me, is the reason why we're the most followed feminine hygiene brand on the market.

We've really stuck to it. We've built our community there. We're diligent about doing what works for us, and Instagram has really been that place. Facebook, Twitter, yes, but Instagram is where we have the most following. The title of today's webinar is Following Your Instincts. In the target example,

the commercial example we were just talking about, you very clearly followed your instincts to sort of get through that very difficult moment. I'm curious, are there other examples of that in how you've built this company and built this brand, where you have sort of looked at a difficult scenario or a difficult decision you had to make and kind of gone with your gut.

And can you talk about how you think about that? I am a person who is very gut driven. I'm very aligned to myself. A lot of that is sewn into the fabric and thread of our business. Because especially around product innovation and things of that nature, when we first got started, I remember when we were raising money, there was a couple of people that we pitched to, why are you developing all these products?

You really should just start with one and just see how that does. You know, I mean, we had already started with one, but we were literally raising money because we knew that we were going to target with a wash, a wipe, and a menstrual pad, which hadn't happened yet. We were the first ones that that happened with. And not only did we do it with a menstrual pad,

but it's an herbal menstrual pad at that, which doesn't exist outside of another brand, another brand in the States called L'Amaux. But we just always stuck to our guns. I remember when we got started, before we were going to go meet with Target, I had to get prototypes made. And prototypes are expensive. I think it was almost $3,000 or something to get the amount of prototypes that I had

to get made. And I went to my brother, who's my co-founder, and I told him about it. And he's like, B, we don't have that kind of money to spend. But I was like, trust me, I cannot walk. This is another point to make when you're going in to talk to a retailer. Do not walk in with just a digital mock-up. You need to have a prototype.

And there's company, the one that I use, that I've used for years is called Rapid Prototype. And that literally, they can take your artwork with the dimensions and everything, and they can physically create packaging. Because you want to walk into a meeting like that, looking like you're ready, even if you're not ready. So that was a scenario and that actually worked out for us. You know, but there's so many of them. Even how we innovate now, I mean,

we innovate a lot of products almost every year. And it feels crazy when we're doing it, but I just feel that, like, I just started doing innovation pipeline for 2022. And like, the number of products is incredible. Like, I can't even believe that it's that many products, right? But it's coming to me and these products, these different types of product lines are coming to me and I know that they're not coming to me for no reason.

So I just feel to connect to that. I let the present moment show me what's here and then I go from there. I don't try to like force it. So I think that that's how it's worked for me personally and for our brand as well. It's a great answer and it's great. You spoke to a subject that we've gotten numerous questions about, which is people asking, how do you think about new product development?

So really appreciate that. When it comes to new product development, you have talked about how you launched the first product and how you had a real personal need and realized how you could a real personal need and realized how you could sort of solve your personal need. Have you, for subsequent products, similarly had a process by which you figure out what are the needs of women out there that, you know, where we're really seeing holes in the market?

I mean, other than, you know, sort of following your instincts, is there a market research process you have or what? That shit is so weird, because it's not. I have a vagina, and every now and again, my vagina acts up. You know, like, I might get a UTI, or I might get a yeast infection, right? I'm sorry that we're saying this in front of you. I hope this isn't making you uncomfortable, Tom,

but this is just real shit, right? Like, I have a vagina, and I know when my vagina acts up, I pay attention, I pay attention to how I take care of myself and then I have an awareness in that. And then I'm like, oh, I should make a product for this. The other thing that I do is I walk down an aisle in a store, and my thought process is if you walk down the feminine care aisle, think about you walk down any aisle in the grocery store.

If you're in the paper aisle, think of how many paper towels there are. Think of how many napkins there are. When you're walking down the vagina aisle, there's pads, tampons, washes, wipes, suppositories, creams. There's all types of stuff. There's lubricants. I mean, you name it.

If the woman's pregnant, there's the Frida squeeze thing that you put the... It's like a bidet that a woman has after she has, that she uses after she has her bait. I mean, walk down that aisle and understand what are humans with vaginas buying. For me, that's where I start. I start at the most simplest place, right, my vagina, because I got one, so I know what it takes

to take care of one, because I take damn good care of mine. I take good care of all of this. And what is it that she's buying? When I'm in the grocery store or if I'm in Target or Walmart, I think about what has historically been on these shelves for years and years and years and years. Cool. I just need to make natural versions of that shit.

Why make it hard? I don't need to make it hard. I don't need to recreate a wheel, right? I just need to make something that's cleaner, that's effective, that actually is useful and works, that people need to consume and need to use. That's what I focus on. And I don't try to make and need to use. That's what I focus on and I don't try

to make it difficult from there. I keep it simple. Love it. We talked about in the Target story, we were talking about that, that quote in the commercial, you said, it's important that the honeypot company succeed so that the next black girl who with a good idea comes along can seize that opportunity.

I'm curious how you have thought about your role and your success as a platform for helping other people succeed, and to what extent you have sort of proactively tried to become a mentor to people. I think the most important way that people can succeed is when they love themselves. I think that that is really essential in these times. We're not taught to love ourselves, to care for ourselves, to take care of ourselves oftentimes.

We have to work, really go out of our way to do that. And so before I mention anything about being a mentor or helping people think about how they start their businesses, I want to help them. I want to understand where they are mentally, because nobody ever tells you how important that shit is, right? If you aren't happy, if you aren't well, if your mind is not vibrating at a really good vibration, it's going to be hard for you to deal with the stresses that are going to come from running a startup. And anything under $90 million, you guys, is what the SBA considers as a startup. So that's first and foremost. Secondly, I'm always willing to help anybody. If anybody asks me for something

or needs help or is trying to raise money or they're trying to get into stores or they're trying to figure out what their products are, I'm here for it because I know what it's like when you don't have somebody to ask. I know what it's like when you ask for help and somebody's got their hand out. Like if you want me to help you, you gotta do this for me. And I think that that's some bullshit because there's been so many times

that people have taken advantage of the desperation that can come with doing this type of work. And so I'm willing to go out of my way to help if I can. I'm not gonna be the mentor that you can call on once a week because I don't have that kind of time. It's really important for me to have my own personal time because I'm a giver.

I will just give, give, give. And in the past, I haven't been well from giving because I try to give way more than what my hand, I'm trying to give for out here and I should only be trying to give for the end of here. You can't give everything because if you give everything and you're pouring, you're giving everything, you're pouring you're giving everything you're

pouring from an empty cup and that you just can't do that and so I'm here for being a mentor I'm here for helping but it's probably not going to look like your average mentor and I honestly think that I don't really think that people necessarily need mentors I think that you just need to pay attention and ask questions and do the thing and have people that you go to. But I feel like a lot of times when people want a mentor, they feel like they need to lean on this person all the time. And I don't think that that's necessary.

I think that you have to fall and you got to scuff your knee and you got to like get acussion, and you really have to fail to understand what it means to win, because it's important to know what that other side of defense looks like. And if you've got somebody there to support you all the time, which I have a Simon, who is like, a lot of people don't have a Simon. My brother is like, one of the dopest humans on the planet. You understand what I'm saying? He's smart, he's intelligent, he's giving us all these beautiful things. And he's always been there to support me. But we've always been there to support each

other. And I think that in our supporting each other as business owners together, I think that it's really important that we fail sometimes, because then we can have respect for what it means to fail, so we don't do that shit again. I do. We have talked a fair amount about your experience as a founder of Color, a little less specifically about being a female founder. I want to ask you a question from Arlene Winsborough, who's watching right now, who asks, quite simply,

have you had to deal with scenarios where you are not taken seriously because you're a female entrepreneur, or are spoken to in a condescending manner because of being a woman? Yeah. Absolutely. How do you handle it? I don't give a shit about it because it's not mine. In the past, I may have been defensive or it may have hurt my feelings or any of, you know, but at this point, like, who cares? You know, I don't care if somebody doesn't like me because

I'm a woman or thinks less of me because I'm a woman. All that you did, all that you just did in that moment, it showed me that I can never talk to you again. So like, cool, got it. I know what box to put you in. I'ma go do what I wanna do. I don't care. Am I a person of color or am I a fucking human being? I see myself as a human being.

I am an earthling. I am the same as the trees and the birds and the water and the air and everything that is organic to this planet. And so in that, I'm a spiritual being wrapped up in skin and my skin so happens to be a really pretty color. But Tom, just like you, I got two eyes, I got a nose, I got two ears, I got a mouth. There's so much more about us as humans that make us all alike.

We focus on one thing, which is a skin color. It's silly, man. It's silly. Yeah. It's so interesting because of what you just said, we have found ourselves in this position where there are so many, let's just take the business world. There are so many companies where their lack of diversity really shows and does not reflect the diversity of larger society.

That has become a really important conversation and an imperative for a lot of businesses to really reassess how seriously they take that and start to actually take it seriously. I'm curious, you know, how you have thought about, you know, hiring for diversity as you have gone along. Is that something that has been an active process for you even, or just sort of secondary?

Well, it's not even, it's not active or secondary, it just is. I hire humans, man, that know how to do the fucking job. That's who I hire. If you're black, white, Asian, Latino, by the way, everybody works at this company. The words that society has made up to keep us in line and in check. I don't really give a shit about none of that.

I hire who is best for the job. And if that means that we are a company that is diverse and that does have equity and all that, right? If that's what that means, then yes, that's what I do. But that's just in who we are as a company. That's just in our culture. We want to represent everybody. We make products for humans with vaginas.

Whether you were born with one, whether you had surgery and got one, whether you have one and you don't connect to it, that's what we do. And the way that we do that is with a very small team. It's remarkable the amount of work that these humans are able to get done. There's less than 15 of us, put it that way. And so, yes, there are a lot of companies that are having to go back and look at it. But you know, the fact is, is they built their companies how they wanted to build them. And I think that the best way to build a company

is from a very authentic, humane, loving, kind, generous space, and that you hire the best people, and that you hire humans, and you don't make it about color or any of that. So I don't judge anybody who doesn't do something that's real to them. I do a lot of these talks and a lot of people are asking like, what can we do to be more diverse? And my first question is, is that really what you want to do? Don't do it just because you're being reactive. Do it because you really want to have diversity and inclusion

and equity in your company. If you don't really want to do that, don't act like you want to have diversity and inclusion and equity in your company. If you don't really want to do that, don't act like you want to do that because if you don't it's going to show up. And so for us, we love every person that works here. We love people that don't work here anymore. And we're eternally grateful for their insights, for their intellect, for their creativity. The humans that I work with are phenomenal, and I can't be more proud to have such a strong team.

How do you ensure in this moment, I'm assuming most of your team is working from home, how do you maintain the kind of, it sounds like a very strong sort of mutually supportive culture in your company. How do you make sure that that sort of comes through on a daily basis and people feel supported and part of this kind of healthy positive culture in this environment?

All of our teams are meeting all the time. Sometimes it feels siloed because we are all in different places and everybody's working remotely. But we're actually working on building better ways to connect to our team. You know, we're actually having meetings about how often should we be meeting as a team all together, right?

Nope, there's only a few of us coming into the office. Like I'm in the office right now. But what we don't wanna do is ask everybody to come to work when everybody isn't comfortable with that. So we're actually in a period where we're growing our team a little bit and with that growth bringing in new people, they can come in with a different set of eyes. And so we're really going to the team to understand how we want to work together, how we want to grow. But we're doing our best. I'm not going to sit team to understand how we want to work together, how we want to grow. But we're doing our best. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that I'm talking to everybody once a week.

Because our business is growing at a remarkable speed and things are moving very fast. But I do try to check in on a lot of the calls kind of with each individual team all week long anyway. You know, so we're constantly checking in and doing all that, you know, but I'm just, I think one of the biggest ways is that I really respect them and appreciate them as humans, and I don't need them to be perfect. And I'm eternally grateful that they choose us, because these humans that work here can work anywhere. be perfect and I'm eternally grateful that they choose us because these humans that work here can work anywhere. Let me ask you one last real quick, we're running out of time so we gotta do this one quickly.

Audience question, Carol Vander Kloet asks a question, I love this kind of very tactical question. What is one practice that you do daily that saves you time and makes you more productive? I'm present all the time. All the time. I love it. Let's leave it with exactly that. That's all for this episode of Your Next Move. Our producer is Matt Toder.

Editing and sound design by Nick Torres. Executive producer is Josh Christensen. If you haven't already, subscribe to Your Next Move on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Your Next Move is a production of Ink and Capital One Business.